


Hold On, or Let Go

by DerRumtreiber



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: First Time, Hand Jobs, Hand Kink, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Sherlock is a Little Obsessed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-22
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2018-01-09 15:21:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1147565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DerRumtreiber/pseuds/DerRumtreiber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is obsessed with hands. Or, just John's hands.</p>
<p>"He could just unravel John right here, right there on the couch in the living room, right where anyone could barge in and see them, as anyone is so wont to do. He thinks he may like that, actually, would perhaps drag John outside and undo him in the middle of the street if he didn't know John would object."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold On, or Let Go

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta-d, finished at 1AM like everything else I have ever written ever, and in desperate need of some britpick.
> 
> Notes: No S3 spoilers. I started this over the summer and just decided to finish it after catching up with the new season, but it's basically canon-divergent after the S2 finale.

“No,” John says, so casually it takes Sherlock a moment to even realize John’s directed it at him.

His gaze snaps up to meet John’s own - open, a little sleepy, as suspicious as always - and narrows.

“I didn’t suggest anything.”

“But you’re thinking something, and that you’re keeping it to yourself means it can’t be any good. Especially since it’s me you’re eyeing. Hasn’t Molly supplied you with enough body parts? Surely you don’t need to start after mine.”

John’s right, of course, that Sherlock’s been watching him. He’s impressed that John’s caught him at all, though he certainly doesn’t plan to say as much out loud. His gaze drifts back down to where it was resting before John’s unwelcome intrusion, back to strong hands, wrapped around a mug of cooling tea. Tanned. Scarred but capable. Steadier than Sherlock’s at times.

He’d be envious if he wasn’t so fond of them on John.

“I said no, Sherlock. No means no.”

No never truly means no with John, Sherlock has learned. And he has learned to take full advantage.

“Despite my continued silence. Give me your hand,” Sherlock demands, even as he’s reaching out and taking John by the wrist, gently prying him from his tea.

“You didn’t have to say anything. I was right,” John grumbles, but there’s little resistance as Sherlock pulls John’s arm across the table. “I need that, you know. Don’t damage anything.”

Sherlock scowls. “I wouldn’t harm you, John. I’ve already invested too much in keeping you alive.”

His eyes are still trained on John’s hand, the one no longer holding his tea, the one attached to the wrist that feels almost fragile in Sherlock’s grip, but at John’s unnatural intake of breath he looks up for just an instant. Oh. Yes. Of course.

John doesn’t like talking about it - about Sherlock’s disappearance. Sherlock doesn’t like talking about things that have nothing to do with cases or his experiments, so for the most part it’s a taboo that is rarely broken.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and despite its nonchalance it earns him a strange sound, a half strangled growl of confusion that John tries to play off with a cough; it would be almost endearing if Sherlock weren’t otherwise occupied.

“It’s not - don’t do that.”

“I haven’t even done anything yet,” Sherlock argues, squeezing a little, feeling the pulse beneath his fingers, and he feels John tense as he fights the urge to pull away; as if Sherlock would let him.

“No, I mean. Apologize. Don’t. It’s not you. It’s not like you.”

John doesn’t like that, either - when Sherlock doesn’t act like Sherlock. Sherlock has no idea how that’s possible, as he’s himself and hasn’t changed (perhaps it’s John who’s changed, he’d suggested, and gotten a ‘and whose bloody fault is that?’ for his efforts). This he mostly just ignores, though, because there’s no way to deal with it that he’s come up with and there are more important things to think about.

Like hands.

Specifically, John’s hands. He hasn’t really got more of a fascination with hands in general than he does with anything else, though John may argue that the fingers in the fridge and trips to the morgue beg to differ. But that is for the sake of science and this is for -

Well, maybe Sherlock has changed. A little. But if he has the change started long before his extended absence ever began.

John’s hands had, after all, been one of the first things he’d noticed. He’d paid even more attention after the incident with the cabbie and the gun. Even more as John had moved into the flat and constantly touched, poked, and prodded. Grabbed, gripped, and squeezed. Everything. His own things. Sherlock’s things. Sherlock, at times.

John’s wrist turns over under Sherlock’s grip, palm up and fingers flexing, and Sherlock realizes he may have been holding a bit tighter than necessary. Perhaps staring for a bit longer than necessary, too. Hands that he’s had memorized now for years, but here, under his own there is so much more to learn.

Sherlock loosens his grip and presses the back of John’s forearm down into the table. It’s putting John at an odd angle, leaning awkwardly over his breakfast to keep it off his shirt, but he doesn’t complain. John only complains when he’s nervous about something else - bank statements, bills, Sherlock. Right now he’s curious. He wants to know what Sherlock’s up to, despite his protests.

No never means no.

Carefully, as if it’s a bomb in front of him and not his flat mate, Sherlock unbuttons John’s cuff, lifts his arm just enough to peel back the fabric and reveal the blue webbing of veins and fine tendons. He thumbs at the pulse and feels the joint thrum of heart beats, traces across the worn creases of John’s wrist. Warm skin, sharp bone.

When Sherlock takes John’s upturned hand in both of his own he catches just the briefest feel of callouses over tight muscle before John’s gone, pulling away, clearing his throat and looking at the clock as if Sherlock’s made him nervous but he’d rather the weakness not show. Sherlock’s gaze narrows again.

“Was that - ”

“Nothing, it was nothing. Sorry. Need to run, else I’ll be late,” John says as he stands, chair scraping angrily against the lino; he shoves his hands in his pockets, one sleeve still undone, and strides out the room with a stiff gait that makes Sherlock think for a moment the limp is coming back.

But no, because he hears John shrug into his jacket and the thump-thump-thump that says he’s taking the steps much too quickly to have any handicap and oh, that’s it. Sherlock’s made him uncomfortable. It’s unfortunate, because it means Sherlock won’t get the chance again. He’s made it a mission to be as accommodating as possible these past months, as some sort of slight recompense. Very slight, because Sherlock at his most accommodating barely even seems to graze the lower end of socially acceptable, but still. He imagines unwelcome physical touching is not good, and he’d like to keep John around if at all possible.

Sherlock gets back to work trying to find a case, though it’s unlikely he’ll find anything half as interesting as where his mind had been going before, and waits for John to get home so he can not apologize, because apparently there is nothing Sherlock can do that will both appease John and make him happy. It’s a wonder people can’t understand why Sherlock hardly ever bothers with any sort of human relations.

“So,” John asks later that night as he tip-taps away at his keyboard and pointedly does not look up at Sherlock. “What exactly was it you were looking for. Earlier. This morning, I mean, with the - ”

“Yes, with the hand thing,” Sherlock finishes for him, so they might get this already painful conversation moving sometime tonight.

“An experiment, then?” John asks, and Sherlock huffs in frustration.

“As if there was any sort of scientific method involved, John.”

“Then what?” John asks.

The typing stops, and he looks up finally, and Sherlock can feel the gaze on him but refuses to bring his own to meet it. He’s staring at the wall, instead, where no one has bothered to plaster over the bullet holes or repaper the walls, despite his extended absence. If they expected him to come back, he thinks, then they shouldn’t have grieved, should they? John had tried to explain it to him, but John is about as coherent with emotions as Sherlock is and it hadn’t gone well at all, because much like every other conversation they’ve had about it, John had just gotten inexplicably angry and stormed off.

“Sherlock?” John presses, and Sherlock just lets his frown deepen.

He hasn’t got an answer. Well, he has, but he doesn’t know how to put it in words. He supposes he can see a bit why John has such a hard time explaining these things to him, because he’s fairly certain there aren’t any words for that sort of internal turmoil at all. You can’t quantify human emotion.

“Because,” Sherlock answers finally, slowly. “I was curious.”

He’s expecting more questions. What does Sherlock have to be curious about, after all? He’s got two hands of his own. He’s cut apart and looked inside and sewn back up dozens. He’s memorized diagrams and bone structure, analyzed finger prints.

What he gets instead is John, suddenly next to him on the sofa. He’s already rolled up his sleeve and he sticks his arm out, pushes himself into Sherlock’s space and waits for Sherlock to turn to him.

“I’m sorry I ran off this morning,” he says. “You just, startled me a bit I suppose.”

John’s fist is clenched, his face determined, as if he’s offering Sherlock the beating heart right out of his chest. Sherlock thinks, this is where he’s supposed to politely decline, think of someone other than himself. He takes John’s wrist in his grasp once more.

“I don’t know how I startled you. I was hardly moving at any sort of significant speed.”

John’s eyes fall closed and he sighs, but Sherlock catches the peek of a smile threatening at the corner of John’s mouth, sees some of the tension drain from his body.

“Just get on, will you?”

John keeps his eyes closed, and Sherlock thinks it’s probably for the best. It was almost unnerving this morning, with John watching him, scrutinizing. He has no right to privacy in this matter, he knows, but it’s easier now to spread John’s hand open under his own, feel the flex of fingers as he tests the strength, stroke across the lines of a palm that’s just a little slick with nervous sweat.

He wants to do more than just feel it under his own, though he’s determined to map each inch. He staves off the curiosity for a bit, runs over each ridge of knuckle and callous on palm. He presses in between bone to feel the muscle and hears John’s breathing stutter. He can practically feel the heat rising in John’s body from just this one solitary appendage.

There are lines that Sherlock knows he’s best off not crossing, but he’s always had trouble limiting himself. Especially not when there is something in front of him, in his own hands, to examine. Something he wants to examine.

“Keep your eyes closed, John,” he murmurs, and has no answer to John’s ‘What, why?’ so he gives none; John’s eyes stay closed.

He covers the back of John’s hand with his own and laces theirs fingers together as he brings John’s wrist up, towards him, closer. He stops, just before his lips press against the soft skin and breathes, puffs of air that warm his own face in the scant centimeters between them. He waits, but John says nothing, eyes still closed, so Sherlock presses on. John doesn’t even mean no when he says it - that he says nothing at all Sherlock takes as invitation.

John makes the same strangled, confused sound from the morning, just a little quieter when Sherlock lets his mouth graze over John’s skin. This - this is what Sherlock has been craving. He wants to be close, closer, he wants to touch and taste and consume John. He wants to know these hands that have picked him up and stitched him back together time after time as intimately as he knows little else.

Sherlock isn’t used to being this close to a living being. He’s rarely interested in it, anyways, anyone that isn’t John, who perhaps has no interest in being touched as thoroughly as Sherlock wants to touch, but that is probably not the case. It’s hard to hide a pulse beating that fast when it’s right under Sherlock’s lips - so close he can almost hear it in his own head as he pushes in harder.

He parts his lips and his tongue darts out, just a quick swipe at first, from middle of wrist to middle of palm. John trembles in his grasp - always steady John - and it ignites something in Sherlock he hasn’t felt ignited since he’s been clean. He feels, and he wants, and at the same time he doesn’t because he is very much not in control of this. He growls against John’s palm, presses his face in and laps at the creases, tastes salty sweat and soap and John.

“Sherlock,” John hisses, but his eyes are still closed which Sherlock knows because he refuses to take his own off John’s face.

Sherlock presses his cheek into the cup of John's hand and just breathes for a moment, not really contemplating because he knows already how far he wants to push this (all the way) but because he feels stuck. Unable to move forward, as if someone has looped a leash around his neck and with each move he makes it tightens. He's unfamiliar with this and as much as he wants to push he wants to pull back and turn into himself where it's safe and the John in his mind is just that, in his mind, and unable to leave.

"Sherlock," John says again, and Sherlock has to wonder if something has destroyed the rest of John's vocabulary and left just those two suggestive syllables in its place; he wouldn't mind that at all, he thinks, except that it twists something inside him every time John says it.

Sherlock presses in harder, grips tighter at John's hand and breathes, until John finally moves himself, perhaps deciding he's put up with enough of Sherlock's eccentricities - given enough of himself. He has, of course, but Sherlock will still fight tooth and nail to keep his hold if he has to.  He growls, like a wounded, scared animal and John shushes him as he pulls his palm away from Sherlock's face, turns his hand over in Sherlock's grasp and links their fingers together proper.

"Look at me," John tells him, and Sherlock hadn't realized his own eyes had closed until he's staring back into John's open gaze.

"I didn't - " Sherlock starts, because he can't stand pity from anyone, but especially not from John.

John interrupts him. "No," he says, and Sherlock's mind is flitting back to this morning before it's yanked helplessly back to the now as John squeezes the fingers linked between his own, firm and commanding. "No, you don't get to do that."

"Finish," John says, licks at his lips. "Finish what you started. Please."

"I don't need your pity, John."

"Is that what you think this is?" John asks, and Sherlock can hear a manic tinge to the question, the lilting of the final words that are reminiscent of a phone call on a windy, overcast day from the top of a building (not so) long ago.

"It's not," John says. "It's not. I want - please, Sherlock. I know you don't mean to be cruel, but you can't just start and then take that away from me."

Sherlock wants to say there was nothing to take away. That he was taking from John what he shouldn't have been, that John's right and he hasn't been quite himself lately. But more and more he finds himself unable to deny John anything - he eats, he sleeps (with only minor insistence), he tries to think about the consequences of things before they leave his mouth, though there is only so much hope for him there ever. He doesn't know if John has appreciated it or even notices, but he does try.

Would it be wrong, then, to let go now and show John just how much he wants to take? He thinks probably, yes. But would it ruin them? Well, maybe it would ruin John, but Sherlock isn't about to let go, no matter what.

"You don't know what you're asking," Sherlock says, even as he's standing and pulling John with him.

No, he's not going to let go now.

He walks backwards to his bedroom, pulling John with him. He could just unravel John right here, right there on the couch in the living room, right where anyone could barge in and see them, as anyone is so wont to do. He thinks he may like that, actually, would perhaps drag John outside and undo him in the middle of the street if he didn't know John would object. But in his room he can lock the door, as if by keeping the world out he can delay the inevitability of life interrupting where it's unwelcome. As if by taking the batteries out of the clock he can stop time.

John follows him, close, though touching only where their hands connect, until Sherlock twists them around and fumbles John in the direction of the bed. He closes the door behind them with his foot, and if John notices the click of the lock he pretends not to. Sherlock is rather sure John is too absorbed to care.

For a moment they're both still. They disconnected when Sherlock pushed John down onto the mattress and he feels the acute chill of his hand, sees the way John's chest is heaving as if they've been running around London, or had been getting up to something much more intense than just holding hands on the couch like a couple of teenagers.

"I haven't done anything to you yet," Sherlock says, observing, echoing this morning's conversation.

"No," John says. "Not yet."

"What do you think I'm going to do?"

John laughs, and Sherlock can't tell if it's mirthful or bitter or just confused. "I don't know."

"What do you want me to do to you?"

"I don't know. No, I," John licks at his lips again and Sherlock wants to shout at him to not distract him like that, because this is serious and he needs all his cognition in one piece. "Well. Everything, maybe?"

Sherlock moves in closer, and he can feel the heat coming off John in waves. It's stifling, but Sherlock wants it all for himself anyways. Greedy.

"That's hardly an answer," Sherlock pushes.

"No, I suppose to you it's not. But it's permission, for what it's worth."

"It's worth quite a bit."

Sherlock reaches out and takes both of John's hands in his own this time. He has to pry off John's death grip from the quilt beneath him, but there is no more shaking from John, as if somehow Sherlock has assuaged all his fears. It's a silly sentiment, but it would be counter-productive to Sherlock's own designs right now to tell John otherwise.

He guides John's hands to the front of John's shirt, and fumbles them through the first button together, loosening the collar before he pulls back.

"Keep going," Sherlock says, and John does, moving down with more grace than they both together had managed, slipping each following bit of plastic and thread from its hole.

"Aren't you going to," John says as he reaches the last button and the front of his shirt gapes open, revealing stark white cotton beneath; it looks soft, and Sherlock wants to touch.

"No," Sherlock says. "Keep going."

"No."

Sherlock's eyes narrow. "You said everything."

"Come here, first. Kiss me."

And isn't that right there what continues to draw Sherlock into John? John always goes along with him, but he never just follows.

Sherlock hesitates. Already he's taken this far past this morning's intentions, and he hasn't thought the consequences through for any of it. Though that's not true, is it, because he has thought about it. Again and again, bits and pieces of this fantasy, John always there, distracting.

"You aren't nervous. Sherlock?" John asks, and there is that damned gentle not-pity sound to his voice again and it's bringing Sherlock to madness with the desire to drive it from John's tone.

He glares, and because that isn't enough to deny it (he can't just deny it out loud - that would be lying, and Sherlock has been trying very, very hard not to lie to John since he's been back) he drops to his knees and leans in, braces his hands against John's spread knees and feels the edges of John's shirt brush against the front of his still perfectly done-up own. He leans his head forward, presses his lips against John's, tilts his head just enough to the side to slot them together and not bump awkwardly, and though he's pushed in close, he refuses to let them touch anywhere but where his hands have made contact and their mouths.

John's surprised 'mm' vibrates warm against Sherlock's lips, and he parts their mouths just enough to taste the sound, the exhale before he pulls back. Sherlock moves, slips back half a foot and catalogues the look on John's face to analyze later. How many others have seen that particular combination of emotions on his face? How many others have been able to surprise John Watson, Sherlock wonders.

"Keep going," Sherlock says, again, when John looks as if he's found some of his composure (not all of it, Sherlock thinks, feeling just a tad smug), and John moves to obey without argument this time.

First John shrugs the shirt he's just unbuttoned off his shoulders, reaching across his body to pull his hands from the sleeves and letting the fabric fall back in a crescent around him on Sherlock's bed. His eyes are on Sherlock, but Sherlock's eyes are on John's hands, which go for the hem of his undershirt next, pause briefly when Sherlock sucks in a breath as the shirt rides up the first few inches.

"Keep. Going," Sherlock demands, and even to his own ears it sounds so much like one of his normal, off-the-wall commands that it's an ill fit with this new intimacy.

John just laughs, and it's much better than the one from a few moments before, because this sound Sherlock can read. It says to him 'and you call me the idiot,' but it's friendly, and it's reserved almost solely for Sherlock, so that it makes any condescension hiding in it alright. No girlfriend of John's gets that laugh - they're all treated with kid gloves until Sherlock comes in and bollockses it all up for him. He likes to think he's just showing them what John refuses to. After all, honesty is the basis for a healthy relationship.

And then John pulls the undershirt up and over his head, and Sherlock is momentarily distracted from strong hands to the pull of the muscles in John's bare shoulders, the twist of his bare arms, soft skin over a just barely soft middle that says John considers chasing after Sherlock enough to keep himself in shape, but he hasn't had much of even that as of late. Sherlock wants to reach out and trace down John's sides, the edges of his rib cage, and see what makes him squirm and what makes him twitch. But he wants to watch where John's hands go, first.

The shirt hits the floor between John’s legs, just in front of Sherlock, and he is distracted for the barest of seconds before looking back up, finding that John’s palms have gone to settle on the tops of his thighs, catching the tremor that goes through John’s whole body from his stomach to his shoulders but never touching his hands. Remarkable, really, what control John has over himself. Sherlock’s own hands shake, useless, by his sides.

John doesn’t need to be told again to keep on. He fists his hands into the fabric of his trousers, perhaps to calm himself, then he lets go. He stands. He reaches for the buckle of his belt and Sherlock finds himself nearly face to face with the action, now, there on the floor on his knees and the implications, the tawdry suggestions, the panning back of the camera to give a full view of the room floods his brain and blows out the last of his own composure.

Sherlock is good at many, many things. This is certainly not one of them.

But John, lovely, dear John who Sherlock never gives enough credit to, who can lay claim to so much more experience in this area (what area, exactly? What are they doing? How did they get here?), is good at this. And he is good at Sherlock.

John’s hands fall away momentarily and reach out instead, fall heavy on Sherlock’s shoulders (implications, implications, Sherlock can see himself kneeling here as if he’s pulled back from his own mind and he knows what this looks like and can he - ?), before they bunch in the fabric and haul Sherlock to his feet with a strength that it will never cease to amaze him that they possess.

“Your turn,” John says, and his voice is rough and cracked like the desert, barely John’s at all anymore. “Help me.”

This Sherlock can do, he thinks (hopes. maybe), helping. He’s been helpful since he returned. He does the washing up after dinner sometimes, goes to the store and remembers to pick up milk and bread and tea when he’s not completely enthralled by an experiment and stuck in his own head. His own hands work, too, if not quite as well as John’s, though frequently with more efficiency. For John, he can do this.

Sherlock feels his arms move more than he makes a conscious effort to do so. He reaches up first, to trail his thumbs across the underside of John’s own arms that are braced between them like the physical manifestation of the bridge that has run from John to Sherlock and back since they met. There is nothing blocking Sherlock’s way now, no sleeve cuffs to protect the chastity of John’s bare skin from the torrent that Sherlock’s often acidic passion threatens to rain down on it, the same that he can so seldom keep in check when they are out on a case.

The warmth, the weight, the sheer presence of John’s hands on Sherlock’s shoulders spurs him on. They are a circuit, standing there together, and Sherlock almost wants to pause and admire that realization, except by the sheer nature of the life force that is flowing from John into him he must keep going.

“Stop thinking, Sherlock,” John says, laughs (breathless? Getting there).

Sherlock scowls. “Impossible,” he says, not trusting himself to look John in the face yet, following instead, the excruciating path of his hands beneath John’s bicep.

He reaches John’s armpits, goes farther still and presses the whole of his hands against the firm flesh at the base of John’s arms and pushes forward a little more to splay them wide - thumbs push in to the crease where limb meets torso, palms flat against John’s ribs, fingertips reaching for John’s shoulder blades.

John sucks in a breath and Sherlock imagines he can feel it filling up the cavern right beneath his grasp.

“Try. For me,” John says, and his voice is firmer than Sherlock would have guessed, under the circumstances, because they are close now, very close.

“Alright,” Sherlock says, because he is still trying to be accommodating (to John), no matter how little sense the request makes to him; and he has to try, now, as well, even if the request is just stupid ( _don’t say that out loud_ ).

Sherlock is unsure how to even begin not thinking, but he starts by taking a deep breath, catching the end of one thought (John) and not letting another begin. It works well enough, because his mind doesn't stray on the tangent it had been threatening (John needs to stop with the nonsensical requests if he expects Sherlock to behave for much longer). But it also works too well, maybe, because his body kicks into auto-pilot (never a good idea with someone who has as poor impulse control as Sherlock) and instead it tries to solve the problem without the benefit of forethought (shut John up and he can’t ask for anything at all).

Sherlock surges forward, perhaps a little too fast because John’s arms lock before John can fold Sherlock into him. But then they are pressed together again, front to front, mouth to mouth, because not only does it serve the purpose of keeping stupid remarks from falling off John’s tongue, but also because Sherlock finds he enjoyed it much more than he thought he might have just moments before.

His hands fall to John’s belt with just a tiny tremor beneath their sure movement and take over where John left off. He slips the leather strap through its loop, pushes, pulls, slides and the ends are free, hanging open, inviting Sherlock to come in, keep going. Button, zip that is accompanied by the sharp sound of John sucking in a breath through his gritted teeth, the shaky half-step back that tells Sherlock John has been thrown off just a little by Sherlock's sudden confidence.

Sherlock will give John that his initial reluctance may have been out of character, but Sherlock has made a decision. He is following John's own orders. It shouldn't be surprising when John makes a request and finds it followed. Well, Sherlock grins, feels it splitting his face wolfishly and watches John's brow furrow as he tries to keep up with the roller coaster that is Sherlock's mind. Well, maybe John should be surprised, and maybe Sherlock likes it.

This game they've played all day (a version of the same game they've been playing since Sherlock's return), this dance - this step forward, step back, taking and losing of ground - is exhausting, but when Sherlock pushes this time and John does not step back, he knows it's over. Because with the next step they fall, together, Sherlock pressing in over John and John pulling Sherlock down as he falls backwards onto the bed (back to where they were before Sherlock left and then farther, farther). They click. Sherlock has stopped thinking, and they fit together, and he drags one of John's hands above his head with one of his own to lace them together. To prove it to himself.

John's hips cant up beneath Sherlock, his free hand tangling in the fabric of Sherlock's shirt. He seems to find that unsatisfactory and lets go, slides down to Sherlock's belt to hold Sherlock in place. John's hard, and so is Sherlock (though he'd barely given it any thought until now, too caught up in _everything else John_ ), and when John rocks into it now everything is scratchy fabric, layers between them that dull the heat and magnify the throb and make Sherlock grunt because it feels. just. Too much.

And not enough.

John, though his hands are both occupied and he is pinned by a body that well encompasses his own, is still a crafty, slick creature and he wriggles and shifts under Sherlock. It's driving him to insanity and he's about to give, to snap at John to slow down, show his hand when he feels John go slack, head tipped back and eyes shut so tight (Sherlock is so near) that Sherlock can count the creases. There is a moment, then, when the words he was going to say hang in the air unheard and John just breathes and Sherlock doesn't.

When they move again, and it is them both this time, because Sherlock doesn't have the control anymore to fight the pace that John sets, it's different. It's hotter, more defined, they fit together better, and Sherlock looks down to see that in the mad shuffling that had nearly broken him half a minute before John has managed to buck his trousers and anything that may have been underneath to mid-thigh, his erection now pinned between them, slotted right up against the tented bulge of Sherlock’s own covered erection, and God but he wanted to see, didn't he? Demanded to see.

That John managed all this with no hands is something that Sherlock is surely going to commend him for later. Most likely in (semi) public, because Sherlock feels on fire right now, feels vibrant and more like himself than he has in weeks and he needs to let it out somehow, lest it all come out on its own, lest he shout it from the rooftops _(no, not rooftops_ ).

Sherlock's gaze slides up, slowly, because he asked for this and he should damn well enjoy it. He meets John's eyes, but before John can ask him anything, before John can use that hand that is latched onto Sherlock's belt for as mischievous a trick as has just been committed, Sherlock's eyes continue upwards. Locked together still, he finds their hands. He presses down, presses all his weight into that point of contact and feels John's body follow his as Sherlock shifts forward and lifts himself and watches as the mattress caves around their entwined appendages and they sink, sink, locked together.

"Sherlock," John hisses, squeezes at Sherlock's hand with his own.

Sherlock's shirt has come untucked, surely it has been for quite a while now, but he only realizes because they're at an angle now that facilitates- _oh_ , that- only notices because he's shifted up, of course, and John isn't trapped against Sherlock's groin anymore but has sprung free of the confines their caged together bodies had tried to impose. Hot, slick, the underside of John's dick rubs against Sherlock's bare stomach, damp with Sherlock's own sweat. The head nudges against Sherlock's belly button before it continues to slide up, then back down, then up - short, stuttery strokes as if John is trying not to, wouldn't be moving at all if he could help it.

Sherlock looks down again, but this time he can't see the straining, flushed flesh of John's cock between them. His shirt is too loose, covers too much, but he sees it, still, his mind watching what his eyes can't see and he can't look away. He keeps the angle and rocks down a little, just to try it out, though there isn't really any pressure on own his erection now, just the abortive little thrusts that are half the time dragging skin over skin and half the time jabbing awkwardly into Sherlock's stomach.

This would be, he knows, enough for John, if given enough time. He can feel it in the way John is speeding up and drawing out each thrust's trajectory just a bit longer each time, can hear it in the half grunts and dragged out whispers of moans when John moves just right. But Sherlock isn't patient, can't stand incompetence, especially not when it's as well intentioned and utterly unnecessary as John's.

"Just do it, John," Sherlock hisses, eyes flicking back up to see the strain in John's face, and he is glad John's half gone with lust because even to his own ears it sounds crass, almost bored, though there could be nothing farther from the truth.

John's nostrils flare, his brow furrows, his lips part, and Sherlock thinks there is going to be resistance until John growls "Oh, thank fuck," twists his grip out of Sherlock's belt and grabs Sherlock by the hip, fingers sliding under his shirt and under the waistline of his trousers and digging in to the flesh there. The rhythm of John's bucking hips changes and Sherlock has only a few long, sure strokes, the heat branding his skin where John draws out his own pleasure from this unconventional rutting that Sherlock has forced upon them both.

When John comes his whole face relaxes, even as his body goes taut beneath Sherlock, arching up, one leg wrapping around and catching Sherlock's knee, pulling them together for a long instant, pulsing against Sherlock's stomach and the inside of his shirt. Sherlock is going to have to take it off now, before everything dries and he has to peel it off later, but he doesn't want to, wants to lay back and feel it cool against his own skin while his erection rages on, hot and angry.

"Do you want me to-?" Sherlock hears John ask, voice heavy now, lazy, satisfied, curious, but the blood is rushing hard in Sherlock's ears.

"Sherlock?" John murmurs. Then, louder, and with a warm hand that moves from Sherlock's side to hover, bent awkwardly between them, right over but not quite touching Sherlock's still clothed dick: "Sherlock."

"What?"

"D'you want me to, then?" John asks, again, too relaxed to rise to the bait of the snap in Sherlock's tone. "Help you?"

There is a moment where Sherlock is tempted to say no, to allow himself the luxury of retreating into his own mind, to kick John out. But that would ruin everything, and that would be a shame.

"Yes," Sherlock says, instead, lets go of John's hand and rolls over and off him so they are side-by-side staring at the ceiling and it's easier for a moment to breathe. "Help me."

John is capable. John’s hands don't shake. John sits half up, leaning on one elbow, and with more coordination than any man should have so soon after an orgasm, undoes Sherlock's belt and the front of his trousers, shoves them down as far as they'll go without Sherlock moving. He reaches in, pulls out Sherlock's cock, and Sherlock knows this will be his undoing, because he can't take his eyes off John's hand now, wrapped around him and giving a tentative squeeze to test the waters.

"John," Sherlock tries to say; it comes out broken and John will be grinning if Sherlock can find it in him to drag his eyes up.

He doesn't, but John doesn't seem to mind. It's nothing like the jerky, restrained desperation of John's own rutting when he slides his hand up Sherlock's shaft, grip tight and sure, palm running over the head and then back down, sticky, because Sherlock is absolutely leaking right now, like some girl, as if John is playing him like he'd play one of his many girlfriends. He feels a pang of something bitter that wrenches at his gut and draws his pleasure out into a sick uncomfortable twist until he does look up, finally, and doesn't catch John grinning, doesn't catch him smug, doesn't catch him waiting for Sherlock to look deep into his eyes like some swooning damsel.

John is looking right where Sherlock had been, at the hand wrapped around Sherlock, and he knows that look because it’s one he has seen on himself in the mirror hundreds of times but so rarely on anyone else. As John catalogues each twitch, tremor, and jump beneath his hands, Sherlock lets his head fall back (Stop thinking. _Impossible_. Stop thinking. _Alright_ ). Lets John take over, gives over control until he can't take it anymore, wraps a hand around John's, not to change the pace but just to feel what John is feeling through John.

"Ruck up your shirt," John says, his voice tighter now but still relaxed, and Sherlock does because he is not thinking, just following, and together they bring him over the edge.

There is a moment of absolute stillness, debauched serenity, where John falls back to again lay side-by-side with Sherlock and they stare at the ceiling and they breathe. Then Sherlock says, "I don't see why it mattered. The shirt was already ruined," and John bursts out laughing, curling in a little to bury his head against Sherlock's shoulder and Sherlock can't help but laugh with him.

"This is ridiculous," John says, voice muffled against wrinkled fabric. "We are ridiculous."

Sherlock hums in what may be agreement. John's hand bumps his hip and Sherlock grabs his wrist before John can pull away, brings it in closer and doesn't lace their fingers together again, but falls asleep tracing the lines of scars, the pad of a gun callous, worn knuckles, edges of close trimmed nails, skin that is smooth here and rough there and slick in all the little grooves with sweat, chapped at the bottom edges where gloves never manage to cover in the miserable winter. This time, John does not pull back, and Sherlock does not let go.

**Author's Note:**

> Title shamelessly stolen from Margaret Atwood's [Variations on the Word Love](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/variations-on-the-word-love/)


End file.
